In my ministry I am not away from my family very often. A few times a year I will be away for about 2 days at a time. This
week I will have been away from my wife and children for the longest stretch, almost 7 days. I am learning that I get homesick easily. I am staying with a very gracious friend. He is a wonderful surgeon (according to his mother), works long hours, and is single. All my classes are from 4-10 PM, he goes to bed before 10 PM and is gone by 7 AM. This means that from 7 AM until I go to class there is no one else in the house and it is hauntingly quiet for a guy who goes home every night to a wife, 3 energetic children, 2 barking dogs, and 3 cats. I am used to noise, people, hugs, kisses, talking! I have been going nuts the last few days. It is too lonely to fall asleep, too quiet to stay asleep, too still to read and think. I walk around the house and there I am, just me, lost inside. Saturday I get to go home!
I don’t express for attention or sympathy, I know many are away from loved one much longer and more frequently. However, it has helped me to sympathize and pray more for those who are homesick and lonely. Particularly, I have prayed more deeply for my grandfather this week. I get to go home to what is known and what I love on Saturday. My grandmother , who went home to be with the Lord in May, will not be there any more for him to go home to ever again. He has talked about loneliness and lostness since her death. There are times he seems to walk around as if he was looking for or longing to hear someone, particularly, his wife. He is not the only one. There are many widows and orphans each of us know. Pray for them, reach out to them. We all know what it is to be homesick, now imagine being homesick for a home you cannot find again on this earth. God is sufficient and can satisfy them in a sense that no home or relationship can, but this does not mean there will not be struggles with lonliness and emptiness. We need to lift them up, come along side of them, cry for and with them, and assure them of God’s grace and hope.
PDF 
Welcome home.
Amen to that! Glad you are home again!!
Andy- thanks for these reminders.
We should have had lunch together one day (though this may have deprived you of this important lesson)! I was flying solo most of the week as well, and experienced the same strangeness. I arrived back to two kids with strep throat, one struggling with potty-training, and one who is now missing both top-front teeth. And a great wife. No place I’d rather be. It makes me all the more thankful to a God who gives such good gifts to such great sinners.
Hopefully our paths will cross again sometime soon. May God bless your church & ministry.
Jeremiah
I am not too lonely — I actually like it — that probably isn’t the right thing —every once in a while I feel lonely but not too much – probably because I have gone a long time without people living with me! When I was first living alone I was lonely and sad! Almost 7 years — I kind of like my solitude! However, I know that feeling and can pray more for those people!
Right off, two things I see as a fundamental probelm with you being lonley. 1. You were in Owensboro enough said of that and 2. You should know staying with Dr. Statton would be another reason the man was so busy he couldnt keep on top of fantasy football. Ok now with the stupidity out of the way.
The Lord’s providence does work in our lives like in your situation, to remind us of our brothers and sisters who have faced or are facing particular trials. Whether those being health, financial, broken relationships or as you have expressed lonliness. I feel the Lord uses those time in our lives to pray not only with sympathy, but great empathy as the Lord laid your grandfather on your heart last week. What I have been challenged with is to susatin those feelings, and prayers towards our brother and sisters, and to continue to pray for those with as much fervor, even when we are rmoved from those situations. (If that makes sense) Well have a good day Andy.
Steve